1. Field
The present invention generally relates to detecting a malfunctioning storage device. More particularly, the invention relates to systems and methods for storage device read/write head malfunction detection.
2. Description of Related Art
Contemporary storage solutions often rely on hard disk drives (HDDs) for data storage and retrieval. If one or more read/write heads of an HDD are defective or otherwise have irregularities, however, errors may appear in data written to and/or data read from the HDD media. Unfortunately, many of these errors are detected once the HDD has already been put to use (e.g., as a part of a storage farm).
In contemporary HDD manufacturing, one or more read/write heads of the HDD many come from external and/or different sources. An instable read/write head may be caused by a bad wafer during manufacture of the head or degradation in the head over time. Further, the process of shipping or moving the read/write heads to the HDD manufacturing site may further damage the read/write heads.
Unfortunately, an irregularity in just one read/write head may lead to inconsistent performance of the HDD. Since the poor HDD performance may not be consistent, it may be difficult to repeat or isolate errors associated with a bad wafer in a read/write head. Moreover, one or more instable read/write heads may lead to loss of reliability and data integrity that increases with time.